The Speed of Dark (11 page)

“That was quick,” she says. She is quicker to pick out the foil she wants than she was with the rice.

“Thanks, Lou,” she says. “You were a big help.”

I wonder if I should tell her about the express lines at this store. Will she be annoyed? But she said she was in a hurry.

“The express lines,” I say. My mind blanks suddenly, and I hear my voice going flat and dull. “At this time, people come in and have more than the express lines sign says—”

“That’s so frustrating,” she says. “Is there one end or the other that’s faster?”

I am not sure what she means at first. The two ends of the checkout go the same speed, one coming as another leaves. It’s the middle, where the checker is, that can be slow or fast. Marjory is waiting, not rushing me. Maybe she means which end of the row of checkout stands, if not the express lanes, is faster.

I know that; it’s the end nearest the customer services desk. I tell her, and she nods.

“Sorry, Lou, but I have to rush,” she says. “I’m supposed to meet Pam at six-fifteen.” It is 6:07; if Pam lives very far away she will not make it.

“Good luck,” I say. I watch her move briskly down the aisle away from me, swerving smoothly around the other shoppers.

“So—that’s what she looks like,” says someone behind me. I turn around. It is Emmy. As usual, she looks angry. “She’s not that pretty.”

“I think she is pretty,” I say.

“I can tell,” Emmy says. “You’re blushing.”

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My face is hot. I may be blushing, but Emmy didn’t have to say so. It is not polite to comment on someone else’s expression in public. I say nothing.

“I suppose you think she’s in love with you,” Emmy says. Her voice is hostile. I can tell she thinks this is what I think and that she thinks I am wrong, that Marjory is not in love with me. I am unhappy that Emmy thinks these things but happy that I can understand all that in what she says and how she says it. Years ago I would not have understood.

“I do not know,” I say, keeping my voice calm and low. Down the aisle, a woman has paused with her hand on a package of plastic storage containers to look at us. “You do not know what I think,” I say to Emmy. “And you do not know what she thinks. You are trying to mind-read; that is an error.”

“You think you’re so smart,” Emmy says.“Just because you work with computers and math. You don’t know anything about people.”

I know the woman down the aisle is drifting closer and listening to us. I feel seared. We should not be talking like this in public. We should not be noticed. We should blend in; we should look and sound and act normal. If I try to tell Emmy that, she will be even angrier. She might say something loud. “I have to go,” I say to Emmy. “I’m late.”

“For what, for a date?” she asks. She says the word
date
louder than the other words and with an upward-moving tone that means she is being sarcastic.

“No,” I say in a calm voice. If I am calm maybe she will let me alone. “I am going to watch TV. I always watch TV on—” Suddenly I cannot think of the day of the week; my mind is blank. I turn away, as if I had said the whole sentence. Emmy laughs, a harsh sound, but she does not say anything else that I can hear. I hurry back to the spice aisle and pick up my box of chili powder and go to the checkout lanes.

They all have lines.

In my line there are five people ahead of me.Three women and two men.One with light hair, four with dark hair. One man has a light-blue pullover shirt almost the same shade as a box in his basket. I try to think only about color, but it is noisy and the lights in the store make the colors different than they really are. As they are in daylight, I mean. The store is also reality. The things I don’t like are as much reality as the things I do like.

Even so, it is easier if I think about the things I do like and not about the ones I don’t. Thinking about Marjory and Haydn’s
Te Deum
makes me very happy; if I let myself think of Emmy, even for a moment, the music goes sour and dark and I want to run away. I fix my mind on Marjory, as if she were an assignment at work, and the music dances, happier and happier.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

I stiffen and half turn. It is the woman who was watching Emmy and me; she has come up behind meIn the checkout line. Her eyes glisten in the store’s bright light; her lipstick has dried in the corners of her mouth to a garish orange. She smiles at me, but it is not a soft smile. It is a hard smile, of the mouth only.

I say nothing, and she speaks again.

“I couldn’t help noticing,” she says. “Your friend was so upset. She’s a little… different, isn’t she?” She bares more teeth.

I do not know what to say. I have to say something; other people in the line are now watching.

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“I don’t mean to be rude,” the woman says. The muscles around her eyes are tense. “It’s just… I noticed her way of speaking.”

Emmy’s life is Emmy’s life. It is not this woman’s life; she has no right to know what is wrong with Emmy. If anything is wrong.

“It must be hard for people like you,” the woman says. She turns her head, glancing at the people in the line who are watching us, and gives a little giggle. I do not know what she thinks is funny. I do not think any of this is funny. “Relationships are hard enough for the rest of us,” she says. Now she is not smiling.

She has the same expression as Dr. Fornum has when she is explaining something she wants me to do.

“It must be worse for you.”

The man behind her has an odd expression on his face; I can’t tell if he agrees with her or not. I wish someone would tell her to be quiet. If I tell her to be quiet, that is rude.

“I hope I haven’t upset you,” she says, in a higher voice, and her eyebrows lift. She is waiting for me to give the right answer.

I think there is no right answer. “I don’t know you,” I say, keeping my voice very low and calm. I mean

“I don’t know you and I do not want to talk about Emmy or Marjory or anything personal with someone I do not know.”

Her face bunches up; I turn away quickly. From behind me I hear a huffed, “Well!” and behind that a man’s voice softly muttering, “Serves you right.” I think it is the man behind the woman, but I will not turn around and look. Ahead of me the line is down to two people; I look straight ahead without focusing on anything in particular, trying to hear the music again, but I can’t. All I can hear is noises.

When I carry my groceries out, the sticky heat seems even worse than when I went in. I can smell everything: candy on discarded candy wrappers, fruit peels, gum, people’s deodorant and shampoo, the asphalt of the parking lot, exhaust from the buses. I set my groceries on the back of the car while I unlock it.

“Hey,” someone says. I jump and turn. It is Don. I did not expect to see Don here. I did not expect to see Marjory here, either. I wonder if other people in the fencing group shop here. “Hi, fella ,” he says. He is wearing a striped knit shirt and dark slacks. I have not seen him wear anything like this before; when he comes to fencing he wears either a T-shirt and jeans or a costume.

“Hi, Don,” I say. I do not want to talk to Don even though he is a friend. It is too hot, and I need to get my groceries home and put them away. I pick up the first sack and put it in the backseat.

“This where you shop?” he asks. It is a silly question when I am standing here with grocery sacks on my car. Does he think I stole them?

“I come here on Tuesdays,” I say.

He looks disapproving. Maybe he thinks Tuesdays are the wrong day for grocery shopping—but then why is he here? “Coming to fencing tomorrow?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. I put the other sack in the car, and close the back door.

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“Going to that tournament?” He is staring at me in a way that makes me want to look down or away.

“Yes,” I say. “But I have to go home now.” Milk should be kept at a temperature of thirty-eight degrees F. or below. It is at least ninety degrees F. here in the parking lot, and the milk I bought will be warming up.

“Have a real routine, don’t you?” he says.

I do not know what a false routine would be. I wonder if this is like
real heel
.

“Do the same thing every day?” he asks.

“Not the same thing every day,” I say.“The same things on the same days.”

“Oh, right,” he says. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, you regular guy, you.” He laughs. It is a strange laugh, not as if he were really enjoying it. I open the front door and get into my car; he does not say anything or walk off. When I start the engine, heshrugs, an abrupt twitch of the shoulders as if something had stung him.

“Good-bye,” I say, being polite.

“Yeah,” he says. “Bye.” He is still standing there as I drive off. In the rearview mirror I can see him standing in the same place until I am almost to the street. I turn right onto the street; when I glance back, he is gone.

IT IS QUIETER IN MY APARTMENT THAN OUTSIDE, BUT IT IS NOT
really quiet. Beneath me, the policeman Danny Bryce has the TV on, and I know that he is watching a game show with a studio audience. Above me, Mrs. Sanderson is dragging chairs to the table in her kitchenette; she does this every night. I can hear the ticking of my windup alarm and a faint hum from the booster power supply for my computer. It changes tone slightly as the power cycles. Outside noises still come in: the rattle of a commuter train, the whine of traffic, voices in the side yard.

When I am upset it is harder to ignore the sounds. If I turn on my music, it will press down on top of them, but they will still be there, like toys shoved under a thick rug. I put my groceries away, wiping the beads of condensation off the milk carton, then turn on my music. Not too loud; I must not annoy my neighbors. The disk in the player is Mozart, which usually works. I can feel my tension letting go, bit by bit.

I do not know why that woman would speak to me. She should not do that. The grocery store is neutral ground; she should not talk to strangers. I was safe until she noticed me. If Emmy hadn’t talked so loud, the woman would not have noticed. She said that. I do not like Emmy much anyway; I feel my neck getting hot when I think about what Emmy said and what that woman said.

My parents said that I should not blame other people when they noticed that I was different. I should not blame Emmy. I should look at myself and think what happened.

I do not want to do that. I did not do anything wrong. I need to go grocery shopping. I was there for the right reason. I was behaving appropriately. I did not talk to strangers or talk out loud to myself. I did not take up more space in the aisle than I should. Marjory is my friend; I was not wrong to talk to her and help her find the rice and aluminum foil.

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Emmy was wrong. Emmy talked too loud and that is why the woman noticed. But even so, that woman should have minded her own business. Even if Emmy talked too loud, it was not my fault.

I NEED TO KNOW IF WHAT I FEEL IS WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE
feel when they are in love. We had a few stories about people in love in school, in English classes, but the teachers always said those were unrealistic. I do not know the way they were unrealistic. I did not ask then, because I did not care.

I thought it was silly. Mr. Neilson in Health said it was all hormones and not to do anything stupid. The way he described sexual intercourse made me wish I had nothing down there, like a plastic doll. I could not imagine having to put
this
into
that
. And the words for the body parts are ugly. Being pricked hurts; who would want to have a prick? I kept thinking of thorns. The others aren’t much better, and the official medical term,
penis
, sounds whiny.Teeny, weeny , meanie … penis. The words for the act itself are ugly, pounding words; they made me think of pain.The thought of that closeness, of having to breathe someone else’s breath, smelling her body up close… disgusting. The locker room was bad enough; Ikept wanting to throw up.

It was disgusting then. Now… the scent off Marjory’s hair, when she has been fencing, makes me want to get closer. Even though she uses a scented soap for her clothes, even though she uses a deodorant with a powdery sort of smell, there’s something… but the
idea
is still awful. I’ve seen pictures; I know what a woman’s body looks like. When I was in school, boys passed around little video clips of naked women dancing and men and women having sex. They always got hot and sweaty when they did this, and their voices sounded different, more like chimpanzee voices on nature programs. I wanted to see at first, because I didn’t know—my parents didn’t have things like that in the house—but it was kind of boring, and the women all looked a little angry or frightened. I thought if they were enjoying it, they would look happy.

I never wanted to make anyone look scared or angry. It does not feel good to be scared or angry.

Scared people make mistakes. Angry people make mistakes. Mr. Neilson said it was normal to have sexual feelings, but he did not explain what they were, not in a way that I could understand. My body grew the same as other boys’ bodies; I remember how surprised I was when I found the first dark hairs growing on my crotch. Our teacher had told us about sperm and eggs and how things grew from seeds.

When I saw those hairs I thought someone had planted the seeds for them, and I didn’t know how it happened. My mother explained it was puberty and told me not to do anything stupid.

I could never be sure which kind of feeling they meant, a body feeling like hot and cold or a mind feeling like happy and sad. When I saw the pictures of naked girls I had a body feeling sometimes, but the only mind feeling I had was disgust.

I have seen Marjory fencing and I know she enjoys it, but she is not smiling most of the time. They said a smiling face is a happy face. Maybe they were wrong? Maybe she would enjoy it?

When I get to Tom and Lucia’s, Lucia tells me to go on out. She is doing something in the kitchen; I can hear the rattle of pans. I smell spices. No one else is here yet.

Tom is sanding the nicks off one of his blades when I get to the backyard. I begin stretching. They are the only couple I know who have been married so long since my parents died, and since my parents are dead I cannot ask them what marriage is like.